One-Fifteen and Sunny, No Rain in Sight
by Kryptaria
Summary: When John and Sherlock travel to Arizona, the case they're investigating presents no challenge at all. Arizona itself, though... that might well be too much for them to handle.


"I am _never_ traveling with you again," John said, poking at his non-responsive mobile with one hand. The other hand snatched out to grab Sherlock's sleeve _again_ before the man could wander off.

"I just want to go see —"

"No."

"But it's right over —"

"No. _Damn,_" John snapped, holding out his mobile to Sherlock. "Fix this, will you? The shop said it'd work in the States."

Sherlock shot him a suspicious look but took the mobile. Soon, he was smirking, fingers flying over the touchscreen, explaining in a low mutter exactly how John had managed to get outsmarted by a piece of technology smaller than a comic book. Not that John cared; he was just happy that Sherlock wasn't trying to wander off.

Finally, he spotted their garment bag — or, more specifically, the foot-long bright yellow strip of webbing with John's name embroidered in block letters down the length. A lifetime of getting shipped across the globe on both military and civilian planes had taught John the virtue of high-visibility tags, and to hell with whether it looked stupid.

"Last one," he said, retrieving the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He went back to where Sherlock was still standing (by now probably searching through John's backlog of emails or something) and picked up his backpack. "Sherlock, get your suitcase."

"Hmm."

John nudged Sherlock. "Suitcase —"

"This is wrong."

"Shit. Is it broken?" John asked, moving to Sherlock's side, looking at the screen, but he couldn't see any problems. Sherlock had opened the weather display; the colors looked normal, no lines on the screen, no error messages displayed. "It looks fine."

"It must be a setting," Sherlock complained, closing the app.

John sighed and got his other arm into his backpack straps, freeing up his hand to take the suitcase handle. "Come on," he said, resigned to the fact that Sherlock would do _anything_ to avoid work — even something as simple as wheeling his own suitcase.

British Airways flew into Terminal Four, which was apparently the newest terminal at Sky Harbor airport. Their pickup was on the south side, outer kerb. It was some sort of shuttle service, and John hoped to hell that the car would be waiting for them.

John still couldn't believe he'd thought this a good idea. Of course, he'd been thinking only of the case — a simple, lucrative missing persons case. He hadn't considered the _other_ details, starting with being locked in a metal tube for twelve hours with Sherlock and a couple hundred passengers.

Thank God for Mycroft — and _that_ wasn't something John ever thought he'd say. But Mycroft had arranged for them to fly business class, not coach, and had made sure Sherlock's name didn't come up on any watch lists. At Mycroft's suggestion, John had laid in a supply of extra-strength dimenhydrinate. As soon as Sherlock's deductions went from amusing to catty, John had handed over two of them, and spent the next six hours with an adorably sleepy Sherlock cuddled as close as the armrests would allow.

Of course, that meant Sherlock was wide awake now. John should have stopped him from ordering coffee when the flight attendant had brought around the customs forms, but he'd been more concerned with checking over their paperwork. Without Sherlock's knowledge, he'd gone through their bags and removed anything that customs might find objectionable. He doubted Sherlock would have any scruples about filling out paperwork honestly, but John really had no desire to explain to the US Department of Homeland Security that his partner had been kidding about bringing forty slides of human skin samples to Arizona to study the effects of desert sunlight on dead tissue.

Mostly because he hadn't been. John had found the slide case while they were loading the bags into the taxi, and had passed it to Mrs Hudson at the last moment.

The next hitch came, of course, when they walked through the sliding glass doors marked SOUTH CURB. It was not quite six in the evening, and John had unthinkingly prepared himself. He put on his sunglasses without stopping, took one last breath of cold terminal air, and walked out into the blistering heat.

Sherlock made it one step before he vanished from John's peripheral vision.

Startled, John looked back and saw Sherlock's light blue button-down shirt stretched over his shoulders as he bowed his head, concentrating fiercely on his raised hands. John recognized Sherlock's texting-pose at once and headed back inside to put a stop to it.

"Is the client texting me now?" John asked, thinking he should probably reclaim his mobile.

But Sherlock wasn't texting. He was just... staring at the phone, eyes going wide.

"This... this is _correct?_" he asked, looking over at John with an expression of horror.

John twisted to look at the screen. Sherlock had put it back to the weather display. Local time 17:48, sunny, 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Looks about right..." He trailed off, staring at Sherlock's face, still pale even through the heavily tinted sunglasses John had purchased in preparation for the trip.

"It's not a hundred and fifteen degrees. That's almost _forty-seven Celsius_. _Nowhere_ is a hundred and fifteen degrees," Sherlock declared.

Biting his lip to keep from laughing, John asked, "Where do you think we are, Sherlock?"

"America!"

"_Where_ in America?"

Sherlock waved one hand — flailed, almost — and said, "The airport. The _air conditioned airport_."

One little snort of laughter escaped. "What state?"

Sherlock stared at him. "How should I know?"

"It's Arizona, Sherlock. Arizona. Do you know where in America — No, of course you don't," he said, another quick laugh escaping as Sherlock tried to kill him with an insincere, hate-filled glare. "We're in the desert."

Sherlock looked back toward the doors. It was deceptively shady out there; an overpass or wide bridge covered the entire passenger loading zone. At either end, though, John could just barely see the blinding glare of desert sunlight.

"The desert," Sherlock repeated, slowly shaking his head. "We're nowhere near Afghanistan."

Wishing he'd thought this through more carefully, John sighed and gently took Sherlock's arm. John had done his research and had dressed accordingly, in shorts and a T-shirt. Sherlock, though, didn't even own shorts, and was in summer-weight wool slacks and a button-down. He was going to wilt out there, but it was too late to do anything now.

As kindly as he could, John tugged Sherlock towards the doors, saying, "Come on, Sherlock. We'll make them turn up the air in the shuttle, and we'll buy you something more appropriate to wear once the sun goes down."

* * *

"It's all _brown,_" Sherlock said, regarding his surroundings with horror. The whole world had been washed out into sepia tones of brown and tan and rust. His eyes ached from the inhumanly bright sun lowering itself from a sky that was almost the exact shade of John's eyes. Even the damned _buildings_ were all brown — light brown, dark brown, every possible brown in between.

The only respite had come when they'd turned into the housing estate where their client lived, and even _that_ was brown. It was just that this particular brown was set amid a sea of soothing green lawns and blue water hazards that sparkled with painfully bright reflections of sunlight, like silver lasers.

"Why the palm trees?" he demanded, having a vague memory that had something to do with palm trees. "Palm trees are tropical. _This isn't tropical_."

"Normal trees catch fire in the sunlight here."

Sherlock glared at John suspiciously. _He_ wasn't having any trouble here at all. Oh, no, not John, desert soldier that he was. He was sprawled in the back of this hateful van, grinning out at the scenery. He should have looked ridiculous with his London-pale legs and his rumpled T-shirt and cheap sunglasses. Sherlock would've wanted to strip him bare, if it wasn't so miserably, inhumanly _hot_ here.

The drive pulled the van into a broad, curving driveway of brown flagstones. Then he looked at Sherlock in the rearview mirror, saying, "Scorpions live in 'em."

Sherlock stared at him.

"Palm trees," the driver added helpfully. "So watch yourself."

That was promising. John had insisted upon taking this case — and this trip — because of the ridiculous fee the client had paid up front, but Sherlock had barely been interested. It was a seven, _maybe_ seven point one, but even a seven and a half wouldn't have normally been enough to get Sherlock out of London.

The things he did for John...

But palm trees. That sounded promising, at least. Perhaps he could catch a few scorpions and bring them back to London for study. Then the trip wouldn't be wasted after all.

"Wait here for us," Sherlock told the van driver.

"Wait? I can't wait. I've got a stop at the Wigwam —"

"That's us," John said, freeing Sherlock to head into the house and get started on the case. John would explain everything to the dull-witted, sun-addled driver. He was useful that way.

* * *

Their client lived in a sprawling fake-adobe ranch in the Estrella Mountains west of Phoenix. The case was complex: The client's eight-year-old son had vanished from his bedroom without a trace. The windows and doors had been locked, the alarm system armed. The family dog hadn't even barked a warning, which John had thought was insignificant — until he'd learned that the family dog was a defence-trained German shepherd, at which point Sherlock said, "I knew it! There's always _something_."

Then he rushed off, leaving John standing in the late evening sunlight with two confused grandparents, a tearful father, and a very angry German shepherd.

"He does that," John said apologetically, trying not to flinch when he heard the sound of breaking glass from inside the house. Smiling anxiously, he tried to distract them by asking, "Don't suppose you'd have a cup of tea, do you?"

"We've got iced tea," the grandmother said with automatic courtesy.

John hid another flinch. "That'd be lovely," he lied, thinking to buy Sherlock time.

They all started back towards the house — all but the dog. The grandfather fell in beside John, catching at his sleeve. "What's that other man doing?"

"Searching for clues," John explained.

"He's a little odd," the old man said.

"You have no idea," John said truthfully. "But he'll find your grandson, if anyone can. I promise."

* * *

"Of course it was the bloody groundskeeper," Sherlock said as the shuttle van pulled up to the hotel.

"But _why_?" John asked, stubbornly refusing to understand.

Sherlock set his jaw and ignored his questions. The case was solved and therefore no longer of interest. And if John got hold of the details, he'd just write it up for that blog of his.

Instead, Sherlock got out of the van, gasped at the heat, and went right for the broad lobby, leaving John to deal with luggage and fees and whatever else. Inside, it was wonderfully cool and quiet, except for the subdued tinkle of water from a fountain in the very centre. Droplets of water splashed over the matte orange tile floors, but instead of forming a puddle, they seemed to be evaporating. Or maybe the tile was absorbing them. He had no idea; he'd never seen this sort of flooring, not even in Spain, which seemed to be the inspiration for the curved roof tiles everywhere.

He was still staring at the tile floor, trying to work it out, when John came up beside him and took his arm. "Let's get to our room and find out about dinner. I'm starving," John said, tugging Sherlock away from his study.

John got them checked in and dealt with their bags. As soon as they reached their room, Sherlock found the climate control panel and set the air conditioning to its lowest possible setpoint.

"No one lives here willingly," Sherlock said, unbuttoning his shirt before the door was even closed behind the valet who'd carried Sherlock's bags; John had carried his own.

John didn't try to argue. "Would you rather just do room service?" he asked instead, tossing his sunglasses on the table. "Your brother's paid for the room upgrade, so we can afford it."

"We'll charge it to him. He owes us," Sherlock said, throwing down his shirt as he stalked out of the room.

He left a trail of clothes through the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he went right to the shower. The shower control had a single handle, starting out cold, getting hotter as the handle turned counter-clockwise. He turned it just enough to get the water flowing and stepped in.

The water was tepid. Not cool. Even the water _in the pipes_ wasn't cold.

This wasn't a desert. This was Dante's Hell.

"Sherlock, freezing yourself will only make it worse when you get out."

"It's not cold," he complained, though he didn't actually turn off the water. Tepid was better than roasting, which was the prevailing condition outside the shower, at least until the air conditioner did something about the ambient heat.

"You'll have to get used to it eventually."

"No, I won't. Bring the food in here."

John grinned, leaning back against the wall. "Fine. _I'm_ going out to have a look around."

"Stay indoors! I don't want to have to go out to identify your body."

John, unsympathetic soldier that he was, laughed and walked out.

* * *

Between the time zones and John's usual habit of rising early, he was awake at four, shivering under the one sheet he'd managed to keep after Sherlock had wrapped up and nested in all the blankets. John couldn't quite summon up any real irritation. At least Sherlock was sleeping, now that the suite was practically at sub-zero temperatures.

Ten minutes later, John was standing in the slightly-less-stifling desert air outside the back exit. He circled around an astonishingly large swimming pool and followed the path to the jogging trail around the golf course. To the west, the dark, jagged shapes of the White Tank Mountains clawed at the black sky, marred only by an array of blinking red lights warning low-flying planes away from the antennas. To the east, the city lights reflected against the bowl of the sky. Overhead, the sky was that steely shade of dark blue that John hadn't seen since Kabul — thin, hot air without more than a hint of humidity.

He took a deep breath, and somewhere under the grassy smell of the golf course, he caught the more primal odour of the desert earth and the bitter smell of resinous plants. He felt alive, at peace with everything, and he resolved that he'd get Sherlock to join him at least once before they flew back home, no matter what.

* * *

Sherlock woke alone in the cold and dark, and for one blissful moment thought himself back home, before his senses registered a thousand details that set off alarms in his head. He reached for John and found nothing. He had to flail to find the bedside lamp, a monstrous ceramic thing that he nearly tipped over before he found the switch.

Brown. Brown _everywhere_. Beige walls and blankets the colour of coffee grounds and some horrid painting of a sunset and horses. Did they even _have _horses in the desert? Horses needed grass, not palm trees, golf courses, and deadly heat.

With a groan, Sherlock buried his head in the pillows and tried to go back to sleep, but he'd already had a week's worth and then some. John had drugged him on the flight over — not that he minded. Flying was _ridiculously_ boring. But not more boring than this.

He finally got out of bed with vague thoughts of another cold shower (anticipating that there was no reason he couldn't store up whatever one called the negative equivalent of body heat) and possibly coffee. Possibly _iced_ coffee, which was vile, but might be medicinally necessary.

He was going to die here.

And apparently he wasn't alone in thinking that. When he opened the shower door, movement caught his eye, a slip of beige that was nearly invisible against the sand-colored tiles. It almost looked translucent, like a bit of hair or fluff, and he remembered the time when an idiot detective had nearly arrested a family's blond teenage daughter on evidence that later proved to be the undercoat of the family's golden retriever. (Neither daughter nor dog was actually guilty; it was the wife's lover, as it so often was.)

Sherlock was positive that there was neither a blond teenager nor a golden retriever in the suite. So he knelt down and looked more closely.

Then he grinned.

_His first scorpion_.

* * *

John was out of breath and overheating, but he felt damned good. Running in Regent's Park was so tame and crowded — nothing like the open isolation of running here. The local hiking trails might be worth checking out before they left, though he'd definitely leave Sherlock at the hotel for that.

He was shivering by the time he unlocked the suite. That was a new issue; back in Afghanistan, the lack of air conditioning made it hard get too chilled after a good run. He hoped Sherlock wasn't hogging the shower.

The suite was quiet, but the lights were on in the bedroom and bathroom. "Sherlock?" he called, tossing his sunglasses on the table by the door.

Normally, the lack of an answer wouldn't have been surprising. Now, though, the silence felt ominous, an emptiness shaped like the complaints that should have filled it. Suspicious, John went into the bedroom long enough to confirm Sherlock had left the nest of blankets. The bathroom door was open, and John saw two bare feet splayed on the floor, as if Sherlock were lying down.

John's first thought was that he'd hurt himself, and he rushed in without hesitation. Sherlock's head and shoulders were in the shower stall, while the rest of him was sprawled out across the bathroom floor.

No blood, breathing seemed normal...

"Are you trying to cool off on the tile?" he asked, baffled. The shower wasn't running, which meant he wasn't trying to drown himself, but still... this wasn't normal, even for Sherlock.

"Quiet," Sherlock whispered sharply. "I believe it's sensitive to sound."

"'It'," John repeated, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He stepped around Sherlock's limbs and braced against the wall so he could lean over. Sherlock had one hand clapped over the drain. The other rested palm-up on the shower floor, holding —

"Sherlock," John said very steadily, recognizing the configuration of the tiny brown shape that looked dark against Sherlock's hand.

"Mmm," was all the response he got.

John took a deep breath, running a hand nervously through his hair. He'd dealt with something like this before, but in every other case, the victim had wanted to be rid of the scorpion. If he just tried to pluck the thing off Sherlock's hand, Sherlock might well fight back, and likely get himself stung.

"Sherlock, you need to put it down," John told him, nearly reaching out when Sherlock tipped his hand, keeping the scorpion from climbing off.

"Not done."

"Yes. Yes, you are."

"_Look,_ John," he insisted, lifting his other hand off the drain to beckon John down. He got his hand back in place quickly, though, as if afraid the scorpion might make its escape into the sewer.

The best way to get through to Sherlock when he was in this mood was to indulge him and try to ease him past it slowly.

Well, no. The _best_ way would've been to turn on the shower and provoke a rant, but that was too likely to provoke a sting. So John chose the second best route and knelt down next to Sherlock, bracing his hand against the floor so he could get close. Sherlock had surprisingly good reflexes, but John could be nearly as quick. If he could catch the scorpion at just the right moment, he could probably fling it away and stomp on it.

"What am I looking at?" John asked, telling himself to stop worrying. He'd dealt with scorpions before. Surely the hotel would have a first aid kit equipped against the local wildlife.

"Look! Look at her back!"

_"Her?"_

Sherlock twisted, somehow managing not to disturb the scorpion balanced on the side of his hand, and glared up at him. "Of course it's female. She's not a seahorse. She has young on her back."

Visions of international scorpion smuggling, illicit breeding tanks in the flat, and deadly experiments filled John's head. "No. Absolutely not," he said, not caring if his voice disturbed mother or babies. "Sherlock, you —"

"Shh! John!"

_"No!"_

"John —"

"I mean it!" John pushed up off the floor, feeling the chill settling in his body. Whatever runner's high he'd achieved was gone now, leaving him hungry for coffee and breakfast, both well away from scorpions. "I'm showering, Sherlock. You can either put the scorpion down and back away, or you can get stung. It's unpleasant and you'll learn nothing from it, except perhaps how foolish it is to pick up a scorpion like this."

"People keep them as pets."

"Not _these_ scorpions, Sherlock." Deliberately, John stepped over Sherlock and into the shower.

Sherlock didn't move, except to glare at him. "You're going to disturb her."

"Yes. Spot-on deduction," John said, reaching down and pinching the stinger between two fingers. His skin crawled at the thought of tiny baby scorpions swarming over him. God, he _loathed_ scorpions. Still, he kept firm hold of the stinger and snatched the thing up off Sherlock's palm, tossed it down, and stomped, glad he'd kept his trainers on.

Sherlock rose, glaring at John.

John glared right back. "I didn't bring you to America just to let you kill yourself here."

"No, you'll let the desert heat do the dirty work for you," Sherlock complained and swept out in a way that might have been intimidating and majestic if he'd actually been wearing pants. Any other morning, John would have enjoyed the view. Now, though, he went back to stomping on baby scorpions. He wasn't about to shower barefoot until he was certain the floor was safe.

* * *

Mycroft lifted his teacup, anticipating a perfect balance of milk, sugar, and the finest Assam, and was promptly interrupted by the appearance of a small card offered in a white-gloved hand. Glancing silently up at the servant, Mycroft took the card, though he hesitated to open it. Only the most dire emergency could interrupt Mycroft's afternoon tea at the Diogenes Club.

Still, it wasn't his way to hide his head in the sand. He took the card and opened it with his thumb.

_Doctor John Watson  
East Room telephone_

John wouldn't call unless it was an absolute crisis. It wasn't even eight in the morning in Arizona. They'd been on the ground for fifteen hours. What on earth had happened?

_No_, Mycroft thought silently. _What had Sherlock done?_

Mycroft gave the servant a gracious nod. Then he abandoned the tea, folded his newspaper, and rose.

The servant gestured elegantly at the tea. Mycroft nodded, and the servant picked up the teacup on its saucer, without the slightest rattle of bone china.

Together, they walked to the East Room. The servant set the tea down by the fireplace, which was blocked off with a brass screen and an elegant vase of flowers. Mycroft didn't go to the telephone until the servant had left, closing the soundproof door. Only then did he lift the handset and press the blinking button.

"John? How lovely to hear from you," he lied smoothly. "How are you enjoying Arizona."

"Yes, fine. It's beautiful," John said brusquely, his voice thin with stress that spoke volumes.

_Sherlock_, Mycroft thought, closing his eyes. The call couldn't have come five minutes later, _after_ Mycroft had fortified himself with tea? Rubbing the spot between his eyes, Mycroft said, "Excellent. What can I do for you?"

"Pull any strings necessary and get us the _hell_ out of here as soon as possible. I don't care if we have to take a bloody C-130 from the local American Air Force Base."

"What has my brother done this time?"

"One word, Mycroft. Scorpions."

Mycroft couldn't hide a flinch. "I'll make the arrangements at once."

"Thanks," John said, and rang off.

In full agreement that Sherlock should definitely not have free access to whatever sorts of wild scorpions roamed Arizona, Mycroft dialled his PA to find the next flight out of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. Only when she put him on hold did he recall he hadn't inquired about the missing child case that had sent Sherlock and John to Arizona in the first place.

Ah, well. Surely it was solved. Much as Mycroft loathed Sherlock's desire to waste his talents on criminal cases, he was efficient. And with John to watch over Sherlock, at least Mycroft wouldn't have to worry about Sherlock being arrested.


End file.
